Germany to secure transmission grid connections for data centres and industry – media report

Germany’s economy ministry (BMWE) is planning to legally secure transmission electricity grid access for data centres and industrial users, as battery storage projects continue to dominate network connection requests, ministry sources told daily news briefing Tagesspiegel Background. 

Battery storage projects have taken up the bulk of connection requests, leaving other users, such as industrial companies and data centres, waiting in the queue. The country’s four grid operator companies received 346 connections requests with a total capacity of 147 gigawatts (GW) in the first half of this year. Of the 179 requests in the area of grid operator 50 Hertz, 141 were for battery storage facilities (70 GW), the company told Tagesspiegel. Other operators reported a similarly high share of battery storage requests.

At the start of April, the four transmission grid operators (TSOs) launched a new “maturity assessment procedure” to replace the old first-come-first-served system of grid connection. The previous system had meant that grid operators must process applications for connections in the order they were received, without assessing whether the location of a storage facility was appropriate or whether it was likely to be realised. 

However, even with the new system, the vast majority of the expansion capacity would still be earmarked for battery storage in the coming years, Tagesspiegel wrote. Earlier this month, the TSOs called for “clear policy guidelines” for prioritising grid connections. “When grid capacity is scarce, how it is allocated determines investment, jobs and value creation,” said Tim Meyerjürgens, CEO of TenneT Germany, one of the country’s TSOs, in an interview with Tagesspiegel Background.

Data centre operators complain that building grid connections is already too slow in Germany, with some opting to instead build their own energy sources, often including new gas capacity. Connecting to the grid can take up to seven years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), and between 10 and 15 years according to Cologne-based energy supplier RheinEnergie.

In July, the governing coalition parties of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) had already announced that they would introduce legislation to prioritise connections to industrial users at the distribution grid level, against a backdrop of ever-increasing grid connection requests.

Germany also faces grid expansion hurdles on the electricity generation side. The proposed grid connection package, which the government coalition agreed on at the end of July, would limit curtailment compensation for new renewables projects connected to the grid in areas where there are already capacity bottlenecks.